Sector terciario

September 11, 2001 revealed certain, but not necessarily unknown, flaws in the way the FBI, in general, and the Counterterrorism Division, in particular, were structured. While the leadership understood the importance of the work, few realized the magnitude to which terrorists could a) strike at the homeland and b) impact citizens psychologically. CTD was an understaffed division working on the fifth floor of FBI headquarters and had limited connectivity to other agencies within the intelligence community or the Department of Defense except in some cases where managers understood their importance and made personal relationships to affect better exchanges of terrorist-related information.

Likewise, other agencies were unaware of the FBI’s ability to collect considerable amounts of human intelligence through an impressive stable of cooperating witnesses, confidential informants, and intelligence assets. Concurrently, the FBI agent source

25

handlers were not effectively targeting their sources beyond the borders of their own field division and so much of the human intelligence (HUMINT) capability of these assets was not exploited. Recent changes within CTD, such as the creation of the Counterterrorism HUMINT Operations Unit (CHOU), allows the FBI to more effectively target counterterrorism sources by temporarily transplanting hand-picked assets from one field office to address a critical need in another.

While the organizational structure of CTD changed dramatically in the wake of 9/11, little changed in the ensuing six years, that is, until January of 2008 when a reorganization of CTD’s Operations Branch One took effect. The reorganization or “realignment” has streamlined CTD’s approach to managing counterterrorism (CT cases through an interdivisional breakout of responsibilities between the two sections which make up Operations Branch One.

The FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is broken down into two operational branches. These branches, named “Operations Branch I and II,” divide the divisions’ investigative responsibilities as follows: Operations Branch I is responsible for the program management of all investigations related to international terrorism irrespective of the threat. This means that the two sections under Operations Branch I investigate radical Islamist organizations such as Al-Qa’ida, Hamas, and Hizballah as well as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Basque Separatists or “ETA,” the Tamil Tigers, and many others. Operations Branch II, on the other hand, is responsible for domestic threats such as racial supremacist organizations like Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, and World Church of the Creator; single interest terror groups like the Earth and Animal Liberation Front, and, finally, violent separatist organizations. Until very recently, Operations Branch II maintained the FBI’s rapid investigative projection arm commonly known as the “Fly Team,” but that too has been relocated to Operations Branch I as the greatest need for these assets is OCONUS when terrorism strikes U.S. interests or allies abroad.

To create a division that fully exploits its resources and the knowledge it has acquired over the past five years, additional changes are being enacted by the FBI, most

26

recent of which is the implementation of the concepts created by the FBI’s Strategic Execution Team (SET). The SET process is determined to produce a systematic and uniform field intelligence collection capacity focused on a thorough understanding of each field office’s “domain” or area of operations. This domain awareness is the capability of the field intelligence group (FIG) to understand the current threat picture as well as the vulnerabilities and then address these gaps through collection.

This type of strategic thinking has been conducted somewhat haphazardly until recently and formalizing this understanding is critical in the FBI’s maturation as a domestic intelligence and law enforcement agency. As Director Mueller stated, “Today, we are focused on prevention, not simply prosecution. We have shifted from detecting, deterring, and disrupting terrorist enterprises to detecting, penetrating, and dismantling such enterprises — part of the FBI’s larger culture shift to a threat-driven intelligence and law enforcement agency.”32

History shows the FBI’s role as a domestic intelligence agency is nearly a century in the making. After the formation of the FBI in 1908, then known simply as the “Bureau of Investigation,” agents were marshaled to combat the threat of anarchists and “socialists” such as those who firebombed a series of homes and business throughout the United States between 1915 and 1920. Even President Woodrow Wilson’s own Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, was the victim of a bombing which nearly took his life and those of his family. These bombings and violent labor strikes prompted Palmer to conduct a series of group arrests, known as the “Palmer Raids,” against those suspected of sympathizing with the Bolsheviks who came to power in Russia in 1917. Palmer promoted a young DOJ lawyer named J. Edgar Hoover to oversee these raids and subsequent deportations of those identified as aliens presenting a threat to the national security of the United States. Despite the backlash that would later come with the conduct of these raids, the actions were largely applauded at the time given the massive strikes and work stoppages, which resulted from labor unrest — as much as a result of socialist and anarchist organizations throughout the country.

27

In World War II, the FBI tracked the spies of the Axis powers both inside the United States and overseas stopping plots such as a group of Nazi saboteurs who landed on the New Jersey shore in 1942 bent on attacking U.S. defense plants. After World War II, the FBI followed the trail of expatriate Nazi leaders in South America following Germany’s surrender in 1945.

During the long Cold War that followed the brief peace after WW II, the FBI again was called upon to track the growing counterintelligence threat of the Soviet Union. From Soviet spies to double agents, the FBI spent decades identifying these spies and turning them back against their own homeland with spectacular success. Unfortunately, the FBI was also forced to track and arrest many U.S. citizens turned by the Soviets against the homeland. From the Rosenbergs, John Walker, and Jonathan Pollard, to Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, the FBI has time and again achieved successes as both a law enforcement and intelligence agency capable of implementing sensitive collection techniques and using that collection as evidence in a court of law.

Today the FBI is again facing a period of great change, which requires it to transform itself into a more agile, predictive agency capable of preventing acts of terror, espionage, and crime as opposed to investigating the crimes after the fact.

28

29

III.

TRANSFORMATION IN A DANGEROUS AGE